Barham
is a huge champion of the claim that A-B InBev's opponent, Budvar, has
made in the long-running trademark battle: That is, you can't
appropriate the name of something *made in a particular place* and tack
it onto *any-old product made somewhere else.* (In French, which Barham
speaks, there's one word that roughly sums up this concept: terroir.)

Think: Champagne. Prosciutto. Feta.

I was also reminded that I've been wanting to blog for forever now about how far along Barham's Missouri Regional Cuisines Project has come since I first wrote about it in 2006....

Barham, a professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is working to institute a terroir-style system of food labeling
in the U.S. -- beginning right here in our very own state.

To
date, three more regions -- Manitou Bluffs, Missouri River Valley and
Old Trails -- have already been formed and the farmers, vintners and
other artisinal purveyors of food and drink are beginning to work on
marketing and labeling campaigns for their place-based delicacies.

Barham is a big locavore
and her goal is to stimulate local economies, especially rural ones.
The long-term hope is that a Missouri regional product -- pecans from
northwest Missouri, say, or pork from the Ozarks
-- will one day acquire the cachet of Champagne, or Prosciutto di
Parma, and thus bring tourist traffic -- $$ -- to the artisans of our
state.